


A Very Usual Situation

by Ridiculosity



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Grocery Shopping, anyway here we areeeee, fluff and mild smut?????, i mean what is the most unusual thing for jim and molly to DO, man i hit such a BLOCK with this prompt, very mild blink and you'll miss it types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 07:58:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17300807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ridiculosity/pseuds/Ridiculosity
Summary: “You’re out of milk and eggs,” Jim pointed out.“Again?” sighed Molly. “Please stop feeding Toby eggs!”Jim and Molly drop by a grocery store, and to everyone's shock - it isn't because it was a crime scene, or a disreputable area used for brokering all kinds of criminal deals.





	A Very Usual Situation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Senneres](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senneres/gifts).



> THE PROMPT WAS "JIM AND MOLLY IN AN UNUSUAL SITUATION WITH A GREEN RIBBON" AND I DECIDED TO T H R O W THEM IN THE MIDDLE OF A GROCERY STORE BECAUSE I COULDN'T THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE. 
> 
> I hope you like it omg, I really got stuck - nothing seemed as unusual as grocery shopping for Jim Moriarty, so that's what I did omg I really do hope you like it.

Jim glared at Molly then, his eyes eye flashing, his anger almost vibrating. There was a plethora of options in front of them, and she couldn’t make up her mind. He himself had never found himself in this situation – and his mind was flicking quickly through options for any kind of murder.

Molly rolled her eyes. “You said, you wanted to leave the house,” she said. “You said, ‘if I don’t leave this apartment, I will eat Toby’s liver.’”

“I think I’ll eat it anyway, it sounds appetising, compared to this drivel,” said Moriarty darkly, shoving a box of frozen mini pizzas in front of her.

“You also said you don’t know how to cook. I brought some stuff which you don’t need to _cook_ as much as warm,” said Molly.

Moriarty’s eyes flashed, as if he dared her to bring up something he had said to her _again._

Molly rolled her trolley forward.

The lights of the grocery store had done nothing to alleviate Jim’s temper, which had been black for ages. It didn’t do that the little Molly Hooper had taken him _grocery_ shopping – and that too when he was hiding out in her apartment for a while (a bad deal with a few human traffickers. Nothing Jim hadn’t dealt with before). Molly being Molly had worried, and Jim being Jim had rolled his eyes, but he’d come to her house to reassure her.  

Jim gritted his teeth.

He dropped a box of cereal in the cart, and pretended he didn’t see Molly smile to herself for a second.

This Molly Hooper was beginning to get on his nerves – she had an irritating tendency to smile too much, and be a little too kind to him. It was easy to exploit her – too easy, which made it virtually impossible to _actually_ exploit her. There were far too many colours in her apartment – far too many… _things._ Knick-knacks from godforsaken centuries, histories written into the folds of the apartment.

“You’re out of milk and eggs,” Jim pointed out.

“ _Again?”_ sighed Molly. “Please stop feeding Toby eggs!”

“He’s a _cat,_ Molly, he has to have protein. Unlike dogs, they’ve inherited a large part of their predatorial genes, particularly in the case of diet.”

“Thank you for the science lesson,” said Molly acidly. “But I _get_ him protein!”

“Not nearly enough,” sniffed Jim. “He’s _dying,_ Molly.”

“That’s because you keep feeding him whenever he makes eyes at you!” said Molly, exasperated. “Anyway – I refuse to fight in aisle nine. Please go get some lettuce, would you? I’m running low.”

Jim slouched off to the section with vegetables, and bagged her some lettuce. He also remembered a lack of tomatoes, and bagged those as well. When he returned, Molly was looking distantly somewhere else.

“Oh,” said Molly, her voice far away. “Let’s avoid that section – we need only some more chicken.”

Moriarty looked at her through the corner of his eye.

He looked at the section she was avoiding studiously, and glanced back at her. “Something against haircare products?” he asked deliciously.

“No, nothing against haircare,” said Molly transparently, “I always feel like buying the ribbons.”

In a flash – he wondered. When he had grown up in Dublin, there was little money to go around and there were somethings that simply couldn’t be bought. Of course, in the end, he’d shown his mother and bought most of them – until she choked on lollies, but that was beside the point.

Why hadn’t _Molly_ bought the things she had been forbidden?

“Why not?” asked Jim lightly.

“Mum said the colour wouldn’t suit me,” said Molly absently. She put a chicken in her basket, and Jim wondered.

Green.

It was a dark green ribbon, very velvety, thin – and he hadn’t an idea why Molly’s mother should feel the colour wouldn’t suit. It was certainly an _odd_ choice for Molly – she who liked pinks, and reds, and bright colours of all varieties.

* * *

 

There was something about it that he couldn’t quite get out of his head, and Molly was humming to herself as she cooked.

“Oh – I’m terribly sorry, Jim, I added pepper – and I know you hate that.”

A muscle jumped in Jim’s jaw. “It’s alright,” he said.

He found himself strangely incapable of being angry at Molly. Whether it was because she was such a helpless fool, or because she was such an idiot, he didn’t know.

He wondered what she would look like, begging for relief, with him between her, the end of satisfaction nowhere in sight. He wondered what she would smell like, when he dragged her inside the cupboard near her bedroom (deliberately, _deliberately_ to avoid comfort) and she stopped smelling like the chicken she was cooking and the pepper she had added to irritate him and smelled only of him.

He smiled slowly.

While Molly cooked thoughtlessly, Jim sent a quick text to a known associated for a small and unique favour.

* * *

 

Molly had brought home Chinese that night.

She didn’t know what had prompted her to bring Chinese – but she had noticed that Jim was more partial to Chinese take out than whatever she managed to cook up in her kitchen. Not that Molly was a hopeless cook – she was simply a working woman who didn’t have the energy to babysit the local Criminal Mastermind.

Which made her cooking significantly different from the cooking of the Sous Chef he had in his employ. Molly didn’t want to tell him that cooking was one of the more relaxing things that she did. And anyway, to compensate, Jim did the dishes and the laundry whenever he came over. Which was frequent.

“Jim?” she called loudly. Toby rubbed himself against her, and she turned the lights on.

What was Jim to her? A boyfriend? A lover? Someone she shagged on occasion? That would require them to _actually_ shag, and he hadn’t so much as kissed her. She didn’t know, and she had never questioned _why_ he had turned up at her apartment after the bombings. She’d been scared out of her mind, so she’d done the only logical thing she could think of –

She’d offered him whatever dinner he had cooked.

Which he didn’t like at _all,_ but she had the sensation that she’d surprised him, so he hadn’t killed her. He’d pointed out that she should try some fancy this-or-that place, and had actually _taken_ her.

Did that mean they were dating? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she played host to him, and she was beginning to find herself unusually flustered around him, they’d never kissed but it was getting _close_ and her heart hadn’t stopped racing at the thought of him lately.

“Hello dearest,” said Jim as she put her bags down on the kitchen counters. She turned around to find him standing on the other side.

“Good evening,” said Molly, ignoring the way her heart fluttered again. “I got you Chinese!”

“Oh good,” he said. “I got you something as well.”

“You did?” swallowed Molly. She didn’t know why she felt instantly _scared –_ and not even in a normal, I’m-talking-to-a-criminal-genius way, more in a – a – _flirty_ way?

“Close your eyes,” he smirked. “And I promise not to murder you.”

Molly narrowed her eyes briefly. “If you do, at least make it – make it cool, okay?”

“Promise,” said Jim.

She shut her eyes. He gripped her by the shoulder, turned her around, and she felt the counter in front of her. His hands disappeared then briefly, and she felt something in her hair. She repressed the urge to finger them instantly.

“Open your eyes,” he said.

Molly slowly opened her eyes, and fingered her ponytail, feeling nothing. He then handed her a mirror (where did he get that?) and Molly looked.

It was one of those dark green velvety ribbons that she’d always loved but had been unable to buy. She was shocked, briefly, that he had _remembered._

“Um,” she said. “I don’t… understand – why did you – um –”

“It looks good, dearest,” he added with a wink.

Molly turned around to face him, her back against the counter, and looked up at him. He placed his hands on the sides of the counter, trapping her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“My pleasure,” he said.

His lips were so close, and Molly’s heart was pumping so fast – that her brain disconnected from her mind, and she made a decision entirely outside her own control. She kissed him – she kissed him, pressing her lips between his, and found to her absolute shock that he was kissing her _back._ He was kissing her back, he was holding her tightly, dragging her closer to the bedroom –

Until he opened the closet door instead – Molly was about to protest, before he tugged her in and kissed her with more fierceness than before. She couldn’t say a word after that.

* * *

 

He found himself putting on his tie afterwards – they’d fucked twice, maybe thrice. Once in the cupboard, once on the living room floor (and he’d made a point to make her scream louder for her neighbours) and again on the sofa.

He spotted the ribbon lying in the couch, and smiled to himself.

He smelled like _her._

**Author's Note:**

> IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT JUST TELL ME I DON'T MIND WRITING IT AGAIN. 
> 
> I'm sorry I've never done a gift exchange before.


End file.
